electro-textual

Reflections on the session for Can You Hear Us? .. at the Converge08 e-learning conference (5Dec).

The workshop went reasonably well. Really interesting people in the room, and many of the people there had used some kind of audio technologies .. including Skype, language laboratory setup, Wimba voice boards.

i came up with a kind of jigsaw / find your partner activity, that i think went well and was fun. (Each person opens a wiki page with instructions for what to do. Eg some people have to wink .. and then team up with the other people who are winking. Example page on the site.

Each team then discussed the merits of particular technologies, and how they might adapt each one to their own classrooms. (technologies included: voicethread, skype, voki and screencasting)

But we really needed an extra activity .. for example running a quick vox pop through audacity, or testing the Chinswing voiceboard as a whole group. i had the microphone and the long cable all ready, but didn’t think we’d need it. In retrospect i can see exactly where it would have fitted well.

Here’s the presentation from the day:

image and photo credits: licensed under creative commons at flickr: Thanks very much: Grant Neufeld

Have recently been working with the Conversations in ACE conference, Eastern Metro Region of "Adult Community and Further Education" (ACFE). Kerrin Pryor was presenting on her research into "New Literacies", where they are using "Squeeze Text" (or mobile SMS language) to explore literacy for young people.

Here at the Eureka! e-volutions in e-learning conference, Ballarat, Vic.
an interesting presentation from the South Grampians adult education
centre – who have been using digital storytelling as a way to engage
their students in the 'disaffected youth' program. "Low literacy
levels" are a major issue with the group, and the teachers have found
the power of using images and voice to reconnect people with learning.

Back from Cuba ..

Well the LERN Conference in Havana was very exciting, very hot, and filled with whispers of radical dissent. What a lovely flavour! 600 delegates full of good ideas.

Michael Apple’s keynote was definitely the highlight, setting the tone for the rest of the conference. He railed against the rise of the ultra-conservatives, and urged us educators to get fighting.

Mary Kalantzis told us the reason for choosing Cuba – the country has very high indicators on all the UN tests for educational development. (A nation with very high literacy standards, Cuba has sent around 30,000 doctors to work in third world nations.)

The visitors from the USA had ignored their government’s warning to avoid Cuba, so there was a sense of radical cheekiness at play. During the conference, Bush tightened the squeeze on Castro – US citizens may visit only their immediate family (not extended), and only once every three years. No other reason accepted for visiting.

(Michael was talking about his Research at the Beach.)

Software Freedom Day

August 28, 2004 will be the first annual Freedom Day for Software: more info here. A nice idea – to run a global grassroots marketing campaign.

Finally back from NetworkingNow03, in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney - what an exhausting experience! 600 people all drinking tea in one small space, rushing from room to room, overheating and then moving out to the fresh air and incredibly beautiful views of the mountains. Delightful, but not much chance to meet people you didn’t already know.

One highlight was Marty Cielens‘ session on Open Source – (and if you head to Michael Coghlan’s audio blog and subscribe, you’ll hear that Mardi Dwyer agrees).

As well as showing us all the great tools that he’s experimented with, Marty
compared the philosophy of the Open Source movement to that of our educational sectors. He asserted that it would be great if we could embrace the concept of Open Design – allowing teachers to create and share a range of learning materials - within a framework of a kind of General Public Licence for teachers.

Also Barbara Pitman presented us with a great new resource for Indigenous Health called “Livin in a House” – an inspiring speaker, Barbara’s not one
for using text-based technology without good reason. She also told a terrible
story about how technological progress can mean democratic regression – back in the seventies local people in the Northern Territory relied on free community radio to get their messages rapidly between groups of people. Opponents of the Land Rights movement were amazed at how quickly word was getting around. But now there is only the pay phone.

Barbara showed us how to use animation and music, as well as a well-known person with street credibility, to get a message across. You’ll find her keynote address at Human Services – worth a read!!

PS: some time after this i interviewed Marty for the knowledge tree.. i’ll hunt down a link. Remind me if you’re interested  ;-]